


selbst

by kittenscully



Series: fictober 2020 [25]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s04e04 Unruhe, Season/Series 04, Unresolved Sexual Tension, rating for the events of the episode, scully hates being victimized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: Fix a woman by breaking her. Keep her controlled by destroying the one thing that cannot be overpowered. Save a woman by removing her ability to process that she is in danger at all.[fictober day 25]
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: fictober 2020 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949467
Comments: 5
Kudos: 86





	selbst

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "I'm not doing that again."

Outside the RV, the glare of day is nearly blinding. Scully stumbles into the grass, her stomach rolling, mouth twisted into a knot.

A few yards away, a clump of officers are talking, and she catches bits and pieces, something about profiling, about genius _._ She rests a hand on the metal to steady herself, needing to keep her composure. It wouldn’t do to collapse in front of them. 

They’re right, though. It’d been Mulder’s undoubtedly brilliant profile that helped find her in time. There’s no one better at looking into people’s heads, and he’d already been knee deep in Schnauz’s even before she was taken. 

She can hear him, still stomping around inside the trailer, no doubt looking through the pictures carefully, hoping for yet more insight into the depths of the now-dead serial killer’s mind. 

In the back of her throat, burning acid threatens to force its way up. 

The luxury of curiosity, she thinks. 

Mulder’s never been in that kind of danger, and he never will be. Not from bastards like Schnauz, anyway. So, of course, the novelty of the man’s ability and psychosis fascinates him in a way it hadn’t with Pfaster, who she supposes was run of the mill for a trained profiler. 

Closets and RVs aren’t so different, it seems, and one can easily trigger memories of the other. She wishes Mulder would come back outside. 

Her wrists are starting to bruise, and she winces. At least this time, she hadn’t been gagged, and could fight back with her brain, the German she’d kept up just in case. At least this time, she’d been through all of it before. 

Bitterly, she curls her upper lip. As if that makes it any easier. 

_Ich habe keine Unruhe. Ich brauche nicht gerettet zu werden._

The officers are staring at her, and she takes only a moment longer to gather herself before straightening her spine and addressing them directly. 

“Agent Mulder will need assistance inside,” she announces, putting on her best authoritative tone. After pleading with Schnauz, her voice comes out small and weak anyway, and she hates it. “And the county coroner needs to be called. I’d advise you make better use of your time by getting on that.” 

There’s a long moment where they continue staring. 

“Unless there was something you needed?” Scully asks, coldly. 

“No, ma’am.”

As they shuffle away, she lets herself sag a little against the outside of the trailer again. 

With Pfaster, Mulder had been on her in moments, reassuring, working his way into her space like he owned it. It’s just as well that he isn’t this time, she reasons. 

His presence has become more of a catalyst for tension than a comfort in the recent months, and besides, he’s already shown her that he’s too caught up in his own intellect on this one to understand her creeping revulsion. Although he’s sensitive as an exposed nerve, he lacks empathy at times, too used to turning it off as a defense mechanism.

But the shock is wearing off, and there’s a raw terror starting to bleed in from the bright edges of her vision. 

The rational part of her brain processes that panic will set in shortly, and when everything comes crashing down, the only options will leaning on him or curling into a ball right here in the grass. 

She can see it, memory clear as day, the sharp point leveled at the corner of her eye. 

Fix a woman by breaking her. Keep her controlled by destroying the one thing that cannot be overpowered. Save a woman by removing her ability to process that she is in danger at all.

_Ich brauche nicht gerettet zu werden. Ich werde mich Selbst retten._

The utter predictability of it sickens her, and she can’t fathom the idea of being fascinated. She gives herself a few minutes at best, and focuses on breathing deeply, hoping that he’ll emerge soon.

By the time the door finally opens, her knees are starting to go weak, sight unfocused and tunneled as she stares at a patch of grass on the ground.

 _Ich brauche nicht gerettet zu werden._ What would she be without her mind? 

“We definitely won’t be needing the EMTs,” Mulder is saying. “You think they called the coroner, or do we have to do that?”

Just hearing him staves off the panic a little.

“I told them to,” Scully manages to reply, and the voice doesn’t feel like hers. 

It must not sound like it, either, because Mulder enters her field of vision quickly, his face finally showing concern. 

“Hey,” he says, brow furrowed. “Hey, you okay?”

She can’t tell him that she’s fine. 

Instead, she just nods, struggles to stand up straighter. Her wrists throb with the memory of straining her fingers towards the tray of sharp implements. The moment she’d seen Schnauz, she’d known that he wanted to save her. 

_Ich werde mich Selbst retten._

Men have no use for the autonomy of women. It is an inconvenience, or else a monster to vanquish, no matter who they think is helped by the vanquishing.

The sun glints in the sky, and she’s back in the chair, surgical light above her head, reflecting off the metal point. 

“Scully.” Mulder is in her space now, big and solid, radiating body heat. “Look at me.”

He looks the part of the hero, smells as if he was just as terrified as her. She wants to collapse against him almost as much as she wants to stay strong, and she’s grateful that the comforting closeness of him keeps her on her feet. 

“No,” she whispers. Stares at his chest, crooked tie and wrinkled cotton. After Pfaster, she had been needy as a child, and she’s only recently managed to convince him that she’s not that small, frightened little girl anymore. That she doesn’t need him to save her, either. “I’m not doing that again.”

“Not doing what?”

He sounds baffled, worried, and if she were to look up at his face, she is sure that she’d lose her resolve. 

“I don’t need you to comfort me,” she says, her voice cracking. She will not cry. “I’m not a victim, Mulder.”

“I never said that you were,” he argues. 

“But you think that I am. You had to rescue me.”

“Scully –”

“Again,” she croaks. “I’m a trained agent. And you had to rescue me again.” 

_Ich brauche night gerettet zu werden._

“Scully,” he repeats, more firmly. 

And there it is, his fingers gently grasping her chin. As he lifts her face, she can’t avoid meeting his eyes, concerned but beautifully steady. She ought to argue, but no words come to her.

“You’re my partner,” he tells her. “It’s my job to rescue you. I don’t need to remind you how many times you’ve saved my ass and taken care of me, do I?” 

She shakes her head, just barely. 

“If it’d been me in that RV, wouldn’t you want to make sure I was okay?”

It wouldn’t have been him. He’s never been in that kind of danger, and he never will be. He’ll never know what it feels like to be perpetually seen as prey, a prize or a meal or merely a conquest. 

Head mounted on a wall or carcass gutted on a table. Every defense ultimately useless against the hunter’s rifle.

Scully bites her lip. She wants to be angry, but he is magnetic and broad-chested, and she needs so desperately to let him hold her up. 

“I should’ve seen it coming,” he says, shaking his head. 

Just what she needs, to be reminded of how evident her frailty is. The bile rises in her throat, and she pulls her chin free. With the wall of the trailer behind her, there’s nowhere to go. 

“It’s just…” He shakes his head. “You’re so much better than me in a fight that sometimes I forget that anyone can get the better of you.”

She blinks.

“What?” 

“You’re a better shot, and I’ve seen you tackle more men in a few years than I have in my whole career,” he continues, rapid fire and anxious. “I barely passed that part of training. I’m pretty sure I finished it out by the skin of my teeth. So I always assume you can handle yourself, you know?”

“Mulder,” she says, dumbfounded. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, and he sounds surprisingly close to panic himself. “I should’ve kept an eye out. I didn’t even want to think about the possibility.”

All at once, she sees it. 

“Mulder.”

He’s been in his head to stave off his own terror, resisting empathy to avoid fear. He thinks that she’s the strong one. He is exactly like her. 

“Yeah?”

_Ich werde uns beide Selbst retten._

“Don’t apologize.”

It’s the raw, frightened need in his eyes that finally gives her permission to weaken herself. 

When she collapses against him, winding her arms tightly around his waist, all the air goes out of him in a relieved _whoosh_. It only takes seconds for him to return the hug, one hand coming up to stroke her hair.

There are tears, but they’ll pass, and no one will know but him. And he won’t think any less of her. 

“I’m okay,” she murmurs, her face nestled into the warmth of his chest, the familiar scent of him wrapping her up like a shock blanket. 

“It’s okay if you’re not,” he says, soft. 

She nods, and his lips press to the crown of her head, gently enough that if she wanted, she could pretend it had never happened. 

“I’m okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to iz (astrolosts) for helping me with the German!


End file.
